If you’re always starving, thirsty, or urinating, you may have prediabetes. This health problem is affecting more than 400 million people in the world.
One-third of them do not know that they have the disease. It is a major contributor of deaths, and health care costs continue to rise due to diabetic-related problems.
To understand diabetes, you need to know what insulin and glucose are and what they do to the body.
Glucose is a simple sugar that provides energy to all the cells in your body. It is the body’s main source of energy. Cells absorb glucose from the bloodstream.
Glucose comes from the food that you eat. Insulin, on the other hand, regulates the glucose in your blood. It distributes enough glucose to the bloodstream, and stores the remaining glucose to be used by the body when it lacks energy.
In diabetes, your body either does not produce insulin or is resistant to it. And because your body does not produce insulin, the cells can’t absorb glucose for your body’s energy which causes your body to think it is hungry.
Without insulin, glucose cannot be converted to energy. So your blood sugar levels rise.
Prediabetes happens when your blood sugar is higher than normal. It’s not called diabetes yet, but when it is consistently high, it could become Type 2 diabetes.
Having prediabetes may stress you out, but don’t let this upset you that much. Just take a deep breath and take it easy. There are things that you can do to control your blood sugar to prevent Type 2 diabetes from happening.
Just make sure you change your lifestyle to lower your risk of getting Type 2 diabetes.
Thankfully, there are helpful tips that will let you lower your blood sugar.
Try these tips:
Obesity is one of the major causes of diabetes, so if you are overweight, consider doing cardiovascular exercises to shed a few pounds. You can either go to the gym, or stay with a group to make exercising fun. Say goodbye to sedentary lifestyle.
Get moving. Join a sport, if you can. Losing weight helps lower your blood sugar. If you live in a building, use the stairs instead of the elevator.
Getting enough sleep also lower your blood sugar levels. Make sure you always get adequate sleep. At least eight hours is recommended.
Make sure that you also watch what you eat. Go with high fiber food like fruits and vegetables. Replace sweet desserts with nuts. Avoid red meat and processed food like the plague.
You can have some of them in moderation though. Too much of them is not good enough.
To help you monitor your blood sugar, try to also get a glucometer. You easily can find one on Amazon. This device will let you know if your blood sugar is within the normal range or not.
Although there is no cure for diabetes, it can be controlled. The first thing you need to do is change your lifestyle. Doing that will dramatically lower your blood sugar levels.
That means you get to enjoy more of what life has to offer without this life-threatening disease..